Otto Mehlen

Otto Mehlen (* around 1800 in Uetersen ; † around 1870 ) was a German captain and Greenland driver .

Life

Otto Mehlen was an "original" from Uetersen and went to sea from Hamburg as Greenland commander from 1836 to 1854. From 1836 to 1838 he commanded the brig Hope . The hope was 68 commercial load tall and wore the flag number 136. It was built in Sønderborg in 1780 and 1800 reconstructed. As a Greenland driver, she had a crew of 38 to 45 on board. From 1831 to 1837 her shipowner was Peter Heinrich Mohrmann, to whom she "belonged alone and peculiarly". From 1838 to 1851 Conrad E. Warnecke owned the ship. From 1852 to 1853 and from 1855 to 1857 it drove for the "Grönlandsche AG".

From 1839 to 1854 Mehlen commanded the ship De (r) Junge Conrad , a full-rigged ship of 158 commercial loads. It carried the flag number 188 and had a crew of 53 to 62 on board. The ship was built in 1826 and was first a Danish frigate . From 1839 to 1854 the shipping company Warnecke sent the ship on whaling. Otto Mehlen took his son Nikolaus with him to the Arctic Ocean on this ship as a schoolboy from 1854.

Otto Mehlen had a brother (according to other sources, a son) of the same name, because a second Otto Mehlen von Uetersen appears several times in various logbooks, who in 1835 drove as the helmsman on the whaler Aeolus and in 1838 worked as a bacon cutter on the Hope . This second Otto Mehlen later became the commander, because the journal of the whaler Flora from Elmshorn reported several times in 1854: “13. May ... we saw the two flours. " - " 22. May ... The two O. Mehlens are wading on board here. "

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  The hope in the Arctic Ocean, watercolor from 1845

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  De (r) young Conrad on the high seas, watercolor from 1845

Literature and Sources

• The Carl family of Greenland drivers in "Schleswig-Holstein's Greenland Tour", pages 226/227 and panel XXI
• Dressing and matching lists, fitting protocol. Merchant Navy of the Nieder-Elbe 1846.
• Merchant Navy of the Elbe and Weser 1847 . Directory of hamburgers. Sea, steam and sailing ships. Journals 1847/48
• Wanda Oesau: Schleswig-Holstein's Greenland voyage to catch whales and seal seals from the 17th to 19th centuries , page 232 ( JJ Augustin Glückstadt, Hamburg, New York 1937)
• Hans Ferdinand Bubbe : Attempt of a chronicle of the city and the monastery Uetersen - part V - VI, page 85 (Heydorn, Uetersen 1939)
• Wanda Oesau: Hamburg's Greenland Voyage, Whaling and Sealing from the 17th - 19th Centuries , pages 146, 157, 174 and 227 (JJ Augustin Glückstadt, Hamburg, New York 1955)
• Lothar Mosler : Blickpunkt Uetersen, history and stories 1234 to 1984 , page 56/57 (CDC Heydorn, Uetersen 1995)
• Marlen Sönnichsen: The Pinnau - From the bascule bridge to the swing bridge in 21 episodes, episode 4: Whaling and distillery in Uetersener Nachrichten of November 15, 2003
• Joost CA Schokkenbroek Trying-out / An Anatomy of Dutch Whaling and Sealing in the Nineteenth Century, 1815–1885, page 133 (Aksant Academic Publishers, 2008) (en)